Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency developed by mysterious developer Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and launched in 2009, has been the leader of all cryptocurrencies. ‘Till today, it has never been challenged by any crypto project, other than Ethereum (ETH) which was launched by Vitalik Buterin in 2015.
Bitcoin is the core of the crypto ecosystem, but it has its limitations, as it is not developed to help other projects build upon it.
This can be solved by using the Ethereum blockchain platform that allows developers to build various crypto use cases projects from Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO).
With the Lightning Network, Bitcoin is able to speed up transaction speeds, which is the next level of development.
In contrast, Ethereum is developing a new protocol that will help it migrate from proof of work to proof of stake consensus, thereby mitigating growing environmental concerns.
As Bitcoin is currently mined to generate new BTC blocks, it cannot move to proof of stake, which is a major concern for environmentalists, as mining new BTC requires a great deal of energy.
It was almost a year after ETH’s launch when it started gaining traction and always eyeing to take the top spot.
The historic BTC and ETH duel
In January 2017, the ETH market share started increasing, and on 18 June 2017, it had reached 31.22%, against BTC’s 38.69%. The closest ETH came to BTC was at this point, but it never reached that level again, and it consistently maintained a vast percentage gap.
Today, BTC accounts for 45.1% market share, whereas ETH accounts for 15.5% market share with other crypto projects taking the balance share. In terms of valuation, BTC has a market value of over $433 billion and ETH at over 149 billion.
When the market was at the all-time high in November 2021, BTC valuation was at $1.27 trillion and ETH was at $569 billion.
It is widely believed that BTC is digital gold, as it has a limited supply of 21 million BTC with 19 million currently in circulation and 2 million yet to be mined, whereas ETH, also known as digital silver, has a limited supply of 121 million, almost all of which are in circulation, but no maximum supply has been stated.
The BTC fans
The adoption of BTC is huge, as it has been owned by many institutional investors like MicroStrategy which owned over 125,000 BTC, Tesla, Galaxy Digital Holdings, Voyager Digital, Block, Inc, Marathon Digital Holdings Inc, Hut 8 Mining Corp, Coinbase Global, Inc, others.
As per an estimate, there are over 850,000 accounts that hold a minimum of 1 BTC in their wallet.
ETH is not too far and many companies like Rothschild Investment Corp, Rye Brook Capital, Kingfisher Capital, Arrow Capital Management, CapFinancial Partners, Weatherbie Capital, Williams Jones Wealth Management, Canal Insurance Co, Garde Capital, and others hold it through ETFs of Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETH).
ETH, which is a native token of the Ethereum network, is also owned by many developers as they require it for building decentralized applications (DApps) on Ethereum platforms.
There are various exchange-traded funds that invest in cryptocurrency, many are dedicated to BTC and ETH.
BTC as legal tender
BTC wins the race with two nations accepting a legal tender: El Salvador announced it in June 2021 and adopted in September 2021 and the Central African Republic announced it on 27 April 2022.
With the market in deep red, this can be the right time for new users to hold Bitcoin or ETH, as the price has come down to $22,015 per BTC from the previous high of $67,566 per BTC.
Prices of ETH are also down to $1209 per ETH, against the previous high of $4812 per ETH.
How BTC & ETH stands out
BTC ETH
Global crypto rank 1 2
Holders 40,939,464 207,606,780 (as on June 2022)
Use cases Peer-to-peer money Defi, NFTs, DAO, DApps
Founded 2009 2015
Founders Anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto Vitalik Buterin & others
Consensus mechanism Proof of work Proof of work
Upgrades Lightning Proof of Stake (ETH2)
Market capitalization $443 billion $149 billion
Market Share 45.2% 15.6%
Token supply 21 million 121 million
Transactions 3-7 within 10 minutes 12-25 TPS within six minutes
Scalability 1,000,000 TPS in Lightning 100,000 in ETH2
Research the best for you
As cryptocurrencies are highly volatile in nature, users should do proper research before making any purchase in the crypto market.
Looking at adoption and upgrades coming in both the crypto project, its value will increase further, enhancing the crypto market holdings in the upcoming months and there will be a new intense competition for the first place, which has been held by BTC, ever since it came into existence.
Indeed the epic battle towards attaining no 1 tag is still going on between BTC & ETH!